If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

A frail old man sat alone on a bench, staring down at the parcels in his hands. Passers by never noticed him as he sat there day after day, watching young lovers stroll by. On this particular day he was watching a seemingly shy set lounging on a bench nearby. The clothes they wore seemed misplaced, as if from the old man’s own youth and the girl had a familiarity about her.

He watched as the vibrant man played with the soft curls of mahogany with his fingers. The man thought of how he used to do the same thing with his love; remembering such things was both painful and enjoyable for him. The last time he had seen her vivacious face alight, as the girls was now, was the day he had killed her.

Looking down once more to the parcels in his hands he thought of his love from so long ago. The letters she had lovingly wrote to him were now crinkled and warn, taking on a more clothe like feel. His greatest fear these days was to lose them forever, much like he had lost her. When he had been released from Azkaban he had been surprised that they had been left untouched for so many years and had clung to them ever since. He imagined he could still smell her scent on them, as though she had written them yesterday, but alas it was only his imagination.

His mind wandered back to the young couple after sometime, and looking up at the bench they had occupied he found it empty. Had they ever really been there, or was it just his mind playing tricks on him?

‘It’s so nice here,’ Lily said, looking around. She and Sirius were sitting on a lonely road in Hogsmeade, a gentle winter breeze blowing their hair. Lily looked down at the sides of the bench. A dead flower was leaning up against it, looking wilted and forgotten. She stared at the flower. It made her sad that something so beautiful could look so dead. She took Sirius’s hand and looked at him, so happy she had someone who could make her feel so alive. She leaned in and kissed him.

She ran her hand through his hair and hummed with happiness. She felt her way up and down his back. He moved his hand towards her neck, getting into the kiss, but suddenly pulled away. Lily moaned.

‘Look, it just doesn’t feel right,’ he said, looking down at his knees. Lily sighed.

‘I know, but, we can’t let James get in the way of this,’ she told him gently. He stood up, looking flustered.

‘But he loves you so much!’ He cried. ‘You don’t know how often he talked about you, how many times he told me he could just take you in his arms and do what we were just doing!’

Lily took his hand and gently pulled him back down onto the sofa. She looked at him straight in his eyes, seeing the fear and apprehension.

‘I know, I know. But he needs to get used to the idea that I don’t love him back, I never have.’ She took his hands in hers. ‘He knows how we feel about each other. We can’t let him stop us. We can’t let him ruin this for us. He’s not part of this relationship.’

Seeing that Sirius still looked unsure, Lily put her arms around his neck and embraced him. Sirius hesitated for a moment, but then kissed her back. The kiss became more passionate as Sirius began to explore her body. For the first time, he kissed her without worrying what James would think. It was wonderful, magical, better than he’d ever imagined…

But then Sirius pulled away from her again and put his hand to his head. ‘I’m sorry, Lily, but he’s my best friend. I can’t do it.’ He kissed her forehead, stood up, and walked away, leaving Lily alone.

Lily put her head in her hands and cried. She loved Sirius so much! It was like he was the life inside her. Without him she was nothing, without him she was just Lily, dead inside.

Later that night, Lily couldn’t sleep. She felt hopeless without Sirius. She leaned underneath her bed and pulled out a stack of old letters she and Sirius had sent to each other in the past. She tried to read them but they brought tears to her eyes. I love you and I’ll never let you go... you’re my everything…I love you more than I ever thought I could…

Everything he had said was a lie, everything she had cherished was gone.

There is your soon-to-be husband, handsome and charming, awaiting you at the end of the aisle. And you are happy, happy to walk down said aisle to him, happy at the gathering of friends and family around you. Happy that he was nice enough to realize that you loved peacocks and had your, no our, wedding cake topped with one instead of the traditional phoenix.

You absolutely do not feel a twang of unease. No, you do not.

***

“Oh, Sev, aren’t peacocks the most beautiful creatures in the world?” exclaimed a twelve year old at seeing one at the riverside.

Her companion scrutinized her face and features closely and said at last, “I beg to differ.”

***

The music has started, you need to walk now. And gather your skirts around you. You need to appear the perfect bride. Correction, you are the perfect bride. Happy, blushing, carrying half a dozen stemmed roses in your arms.

Who you are not is someone who misses the dead roses a boy of fourteen once saved for you all summer.

***

“I got them for you because you said you liked them, but when I came back, you’d already gone on vacation with your folks,” the boy said hesitantly.

“So you kept them all this time?” the girl asked incredulously.

“Not very well as you can see, they died a week later,” the boy said attempting, his usual sarcasm.

“All the better,” said the girl, scooping the dead roses in her arms.

***

You are there now, beside the man who will be yours to love and cherish forevermore, in riches and in poverty, in sickness and in health. Till death do you part.

And you are still happy, still smiling, still the picture of joy. You are only thinking of your happy life and future ahead.

You most certainly are not thinking of all those letters, unfinished and unsent, that you threw in the fireplace last night, fighting back tears.

***

Dear Sev,

I don’t know how long forever is, but I will love you till then.

Your Lily.

***

And it is done now. You and your husband are bonded for life. And you are perfectly happy. And the tears that are rolling down your cheeks are happy ones.

Angelina Johnson stared across the village green at the churchyard and wondered why she was there. It was stupid really. There were other places she ought to be – she would be back at the church later. Now was not the time. She should be having her hair put up right at that moment, not staring across the green. Molly would have discovered her absence by now, she knew, and chaos would almost certainly have ensued, but there was something Angelina had to do, a ghost she had to lay to rest before that afternoon’s festivities.

With a sigh, she forced herself up off the bench and, after one quick glance back at its solitude, strode towards the churchyard, her feet taking her straight to the place she sought – an achingly familiar grave.

The Weasley’s had been so preoccupied with the wedding that no one had visited for several days, and a heavy frost had killed the flowers that Molly had last laid for her son. Angelina picked up a fallen rosebud. It was brown-tinged and brittle, the outer petals shattering beneath her fingers. She dropped it quickly, surprised at its fragility.

“I hope you understand,” she whispered, the harsh November wind whipping her words away to spiral across the grass like the last brown leaves of autumn that too tumbled end-over-end away from her. “I’m not replacing you with him, but you threw us together. I missed you, and he missed a part of himself. It made sense. He’s not you; it’s different when we’re together, but I do love him.

“That’s why I need to leave these with you. I have to say goodbye. I wrote them after you were gone. I knew you’d never read them, but I wrote them, and now I have to let you go.” She drew out a sheaf of letters and almost reverently laid them at her feet.

“Goodbye, Fred Weasley.”

A single tear stole down her cheek, and as she turned to leave, the greedy wind stole the letters scattering them amongst the leaves.

Name: Pondering/TashHouse:RavenclawTitle: I'll See You In the MorningWord Count: 500Warnings: Character Death

Every day, people look at the old man with the grey hair sit on the park bench, holding nothing but a cardboard box. It is a simple plain box, without the slightest touch of decoration, but still he is seen clinging to it as if it were his most precious possession of all.

Sometimes, when he thinks no-one is watching, he lifts the lid. Those who peek over the top of the books they pretend to be reading let their imaginations go wild, thinking that this old man is clutching a box of jewels or treasures.

But their hearts drop when all they see the old man’s fingers flicking through a pile of wearied old letters.

What they do not know, however, is that to the old man reading the letters of a time long gone by, the box contains more treasures than he ever thought he could have.

The oldest letter at the bottom of the box is written is his own messy script. Meet me tomorrow at the large overgrown tree by the lake. I have something to show you.

Back then he did not have any idea what this single note would cause; that with two simple sentences he had secured a future of happiness. Not that it had all been happy, of course. In his long life, there had been many ups and downs.

He thumbs back through the letters, looking for the photographs he had slipped in here, to remind himself of those times long ago. Soon he pulls it in front of him, and his heart swells with joy as he watches the seven red-haired children wave back at him, all of them wearing heavy woolen jumpers as they crowded around a tree at Christmas time.

Now his children have hair as grey as he does, apart from the one that didn’t have the chance to grow grey hair at all.

Back when he was younger, he used to take care of his grandchildren and shared as much love and joy with them as he had his own children. But now, his children have grandkids of their own, and live all over the country. Sometimes, though, when the family gets together, he comes to spend the evening with them, and shows his great grand-children all his memoirs of the past.

The other photo in the box makes him catch his breath. It is a photo of his late wife, Molly, taken just the day before she passed away. Before they went to sleep that night, she said, “I’ll see you in the morning.” But when he woke up the next day, her eyes were closed and never opened again.

Sun breaks through the clouds and a beam of light hits him in the face. He whispers to the sky, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

The next day, the bench is empty. With time, the other people in the park forget about the old man, and go back to reading their books.

Today he was like any other man, unimposing, indistinguishable from the next. His usual brisk gait replaced with a casual stride, although his long woollen cloak still billowed around his legs leaving the faintest resemblance of the man he pretended to be everyday. Today he was himself: unrecognisable and unknown to everyone in his life. There’d only been one shown his true heart and she was why he ventured out on this cold January morning.

Waves of the river lapped against the stone wall in time with his beating heart; urgent and yet ebbing with each step as he reached the spot where they’d spent so many hours in their youth. He ached with her absence, but couldn’t wait to be in this place with her memory.

An old man looked up at him as he sat on the opposite end of the bench and in his mind’s eye it was her sitting next to him. Carefully, he pulled a worn packet of letters from his pocket, held it in his lap and smiled. It felt foreign to him, as he hadn’t done so in years, maybe not since her. He sifted through the stationary gingerly as if each touch where loving caresses to her face. They weren’t love letters in the true sense of the word, but notes between two friends savoured greedily over the years.

However, they were love letters to him. He could hear her laughter with the rustling of the pages; see her in each curve of her script. It was free and lively as she’d been and he remembered how she use to tease him about his small cramped writing, having so much to say and never enough space to say it. That’s how it would always be with her, so much he wanted to say and the space to say it closing up before him.

He’d wanted to tell her so many times how he felt, but the opportunities passed him by in abundance until another closed him out. A small rose, long since faded like her, turned in his fingertips. He’d given it to her anonymously and she’d thought it was from Potter. Stupidly, he’d been too afraid to take the chance and spill his heart to her, so he just picked the discarded bud out of the bin and kept it; she’d touched it and for a brief moment she looked at him with hope in her eyes. But in the end, it was the brave of heart that won her and now he could only do this last thing for her: protect her son.

Softly, he brushed the dead flower to his lips.

“Happy birthday, Lily.”

With one last glance, he looked out over the ever-changing river before heading back to Hogwarts. He had to get the Sword and leave it for the boy.

Setting out on his mission with her memory warming him inside, her smile sparkled brightly lighting his way.

Orion watched her sitting there, bent gracefully over her book. Her dark hair fell slightly out of its tie and her harsh, passionate eyes were fixed upon the book’s page as her careful, perfect hands turned it over. She sat still as she read. She did not notice his eyes, so unlike what they had once been, burning worlds and flooding worlds and in love.

Her love set things aflame; her love burst all the dams. This love, her love, their love… more than he could take but every day he wanted more. She burst the moon to gold, she took with her when she left, every last star. She burst his heart into a gasket. She burst his body and his soul and his everything and he fell apart, clinging to her skirt hem. She was all and everything. She was the golden moon, she was the stolen star. She was brighter than the bird of beauty. She was a rose garden; all of the prettiest things that lived. She was his love, forever, his only love in the world. She was his too much and his not enough.

She was there and she looked up with a smile on her face.

They made themselves rich upon the fallen coins of the burst moon and promises scrawled into unaddressed letters that the heart wrote in its spare time.

*”*

Orion wished she wouldn’t steal the stars. He wished that she could let him be shined upon, even in her absence.

Things had come and gone, like years and butterflies and sons. He held a rose in his hands, which he had picked from a garden somewhere one of those days. The blackness of an end crept over its petals, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away, as he sat there alone.

It was spring in this park and something had burned out his heart. Age had come to stay, Walburga had spent all of their moon coins to keep two stars from ever returning from the sky and somehow she had cheated. There went Sirius, off into the world he’d been stolen from so long before. He cut the strings and he stretched his wings. Regulus had wings too. But he hid his behind his back; his parents didn’t wish to see.

She was the fire that consumed him and he could not put it out. She had consumed all. All that was left were the keys and the names and one of the stars, whose light was becoming small. And there were ruins of hearts. Hearts that had beat and broken down the walls of human frailty. One ruin of a heart beat inside an aged man’s chest as he sat on a bench at the park, holding the rose.

Where had she put the stars?

He left the rose on the empty bench. It sweetened the starless solitude. Flowers smell the same in life and death.

Name: hermy_loves_ronHouse: Gryffindor!Warnings: hints of slashinessWords: 500 (it was nicely under the limit till I did some editing, then it was two over >.<)Title: For the Greater Good (am I original or what?)

It all came back to him, really.

For the greater good. He still believed in that. All these years later, that line he had quickly penned, that line that would become a slogan for a cause he never meant to promote, that line…still held true to him.

Oh, not in the way he had meant it. No, Dumbledore’s way was different. But the basic principle still held true: that in order to do what is best for the world, sacrifices must be made.

He had made the mistake of forgetting that some fifty years ago. He had let his own selfish fears get in the way of the greater good. And now it had nearly happened again. He’d promised himself, after his mistake that long half-century past, he would not be tempted away from the greater good. But he had been tempted, and this time selfish desire caused him to break his promise. It would not happen a third time. These mistakes, these slip-ups, these broken promises…

They all came back to him.

And so he came to this place, this remote Muggle park, to do what must be done. For the greater good. What should have been done a century ago. What his selfishness had prevented him from doing.

He sat on the bench, a stack of aged letters in his hand, staring out at the sea. His blackened hand trembled. This small task, this shouldn’t be so hard. It should be a simple thing just to throw them—to give them forever to the whims of the sea, to be washed away and forgotten with the tide.

But he could not bring himself to do it. He ached with the longing to read through them all, as he had not done in who knew how long. He was so tempted. He could not throw these letters, even for the greater good.

For these letters contained his greater good. His love, misplaced as it was. His hopes, his dreams, his youth, his brilliance, his faults. Every letter he’d ever received that summer—that one short summer that defined so much of his life—was here, as were most of the letters he had sent. His bane, tied in a neat little bundle and held in his blackened hand. A hand that was a constant reminder of what could happen if you forgot the greater good.

Keeping the letters all these years had been a mistake. The longer they stayed with him, the more he could not part with them. The more conflicted his feelings became. The more the greater good faded into the background.

One man’s selfishness should not determine the fate of the world. One man’s lost love, foolish and young, should not haunt so many so long after. One man’s inability to throw a pile of letters into the ocean should not stand in the way of the greater good.

Congratulations to everyone who posted! These were all very awesome drabbles! Sorry it took me a month to judge them. >.>
Either way! Enjoy!

First Place:
His Favorite by x_Ginny Potter_x

Second Place:
The Real Magic by Phia Phoenix

Third Place: TIE
I’ll See You In the Morning by Pondering
ANDHeart Safe by Gin_Drinka

I've left moddom/fandom...though don't be surprised if I get caught lurking once in a blue moon.
All questions pertinent to Ravenclaw need to be sent to ToBeOrNotToBeAGryffindor
If you wish to keep in touch, feel free to friend me on LJ - I don't friend anyone under the age of 18. Sorry!